From today's itinerary (August 31, 2019): The trail starts out in the lush rich mountain forest before ascending into the moorland zone of giant heather. The trail climbs steadily with views across the plains opening out as we reach the rim of the Shira Plateau. There is a tangible sense of wilderness especially if the afternoon mists come in. We camp in the centre of the plateau at Shira One (3550 m). Approx 6-7 hours walking (4 miles).
This is our second day in the "forest" zone, so today we made it through the first and second zones (cultivation and forest) and into the heather-moorland zone. The day started with a song lead by the guides and sung by all the porters and support staff who is joining us up to the last camp.
Here's yet another picture of our friendly monkey who joined us in camp before we started the day trekking. (I don't know who this other guy is taking a picture:)
Breathing isn't too hard yet, but you can get an idea of the lovely forest path we take as we wind our way up to the plateau.
The most exciting thing today was seeing protea which I thought were only found in South Africa. We walked through what I would call a protea forest.
There were some beautiful views as we made it up to the ridge line and we could see the plateau and our next camp site. You could see some weather coming in.
It was still sunny when we made it to the camp site.
At each camping spot a "main" tent is set up where meals are served.
These spots have several tour groups camping in the same area and each has a tent set up. They all are green. I ended up going to another tour operators tent by accident. No one was there and I helped myself to popcorn until someone finally showed up and I realized my error... I walked away with my tail between my legs.
Here are pictures of the views from our area as the sun goes down.
The weather turned and we had our first storm of the trip. Thankfully it didn't last very long.
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